Finding Neverland ~ Part I

I have been teas­ing you with the invi­ta­tion to trans­port you to Never Never Land for a cou­ple of months now… and now I am finally keep­ing up my promise! I was beyond thrilled when the party for my daugh­ter, Anabelle, was fea­tured on the fab­u­lous Host­ess with the Most­ess a few days ago! I am now shar­ing some new details and pho­tos of the party, which I will break up into two posts due to the numer­ous images and descrip­tions! So gather up some pixie dust and enjoy your flight!!!

Anabelle was turn­ing four this year and when we were decid­ing on a theme for the cel­e­bra­tion, we wanted to find one that appealed to her and also would work for a co-ed party since many of her friends and their sib­lings are boys! Thus, we finally set­tled on a Nev­er­land premise, which would appeal to all the guests – male or female… young or old! The Peter Pan story pro­vided so many ideas, but also required a lit­tle bit of nar­row­ing because of the vast array of pos­si­bil­i­ties! To aid me in focus­ing my thoughts, I drew inspi­ra­tion from one of my favorite movies: “Find­ing Nev­er­land”. The movie fol­lows Peter Pan’s author, J.M. Bar­rie, as events in his life in the Vic­to­rian era moti­vate him to write the enchant­ing play. From there, I con­cen­trated on the over­all Vic­to­rian feel with ornate, black décor in the Dar­ling children’s nurs­ery, con­trasted with nature and trees at the party’s loca­tion to rep­re­sent their jour­ney to Nev­er­land. I also uti­lized numer­ous sil­hou­ettes, cor­re­spond­ing to this time period, and also rep­re­sent­ing Peter Pan’s search for his shadow. I wanted the chil­dren to feel as if they were being trans­ported to this mag­i­cal land and encour­age them to believe…

In cre­at­ing the invi­ta­tions, I uti­lized a scrap­book paper back­ground that depicted London’s land­marks (most notably Big Ben) and added a sil­hou­ette of Peter Pan fly­ing, along with the word “believe”. The images and green, black and cream col­ors set the mood for the party, while the word­ing inside invited guests to “…come with us where dreams are born and time is never planned… just think of happy things and your heart will fly on wings for­ever in Never Never Land.”

The party took place at a local park and the focal point included two “beds”, anchored by a dresser, to set the mood of the Darling’s nurs­ery. The beds were actu­ally kids tables where they would dine and inspired by none other than Jenn from Host­ess with the Most­ess! The fab­rics came from Joann Fab­ric and Craft Stores and I tried to pick pat­terns that com­pli­mented the time period, but also con­veyed a nat­ural, out­door feel to make both envi­ron­ments come together.

The beds were made to look like they belonged to the Dar­ling boys, John and Michael, and both the décor on the bed and the respec­tive night­stands cor­re­sponded to their acces­sories and roles in the story. I found the black shades in the clear­ance sec­tion at Ikea and paired it with a low-priced base to make the lamps. They didn’t really fit together, so I hot glued them together and adorned the shade with an adhe­sive embroi­dered let­ter (also found at Joann’s), as well as the green and gold but­ter­flies seen through­out the decor.

The small chairs were dressed up with black and green tulle with a Peter Pan sil­hou­ette. My mother was a tremen­dous help with her remark­able sewing skills! I was only able to find stark white children’s chairs to rent and since the color scheme included more beige/off-white shades, I wanted some­thing that would mask the bright­ness. I had already pur­chased green and black tulle in attempt to make my own tutus for the girls, but after fail­ing, I was able to make myself feel bet­ter by find­ing an alter­na­tive use for it!

At the beds, the young guests were offered green pixie juice in vases from Ikea, as well as a lunch served in kraft gable boxes from Whis­per­ing Pines, includ­ing small sand­wiches, cheese sticks, green grapes and of course, some Pirate’s Booty pop­corn! The boxes on the children’s table were dressed up with a quote from the story warn­ing of the inevitabil­ity of the pass­ing of time and again, com­bined a more for­mal “frame” with a piece of nature.

We had addi­tional lunch boxes and pixie juice for the adults at a sep­a­rate table, but the offer­ings were exactly the same as the meals offered to the chil­dren. After all, the entire party was meant to bring them back to their child­hood and encour­age every­one to fly!

The anchor of the “out­door nurs­ery” was a dresser that came from my home and included the dessert, as well as dec­o­ra­tions, includ­ing sil­hou­ette cut-outs of Anabelle, my hus­band and myself that we had done at a trip to Dis­ney­land! Some other pieces included a period alarm clock (actu­ally found at Ikea!), small Vic­to­rian chairs, ornate num­ber “4“s and of course, Tinkerbell’s lantern!

I debated on an entire dessert table selec­tion, but decided to focus on my spe­cialty: cup­cakes! The choco­late and vanilla cup­cakes were gar­nished with fon­dant top­pers rep­re­sent­ing all the roles from Peter Pan. They also mir­rored dec­o­ra­tions found through­out the party, all ref­er­enc­ing the sym­bols for each char­ac­ter with­out actu­ally por­tray­ing their actual images. I inten­tion­ally avoided Peter Pan and Tin­ker­bell and Cap­tain Hook illus­tra­tions to encour­age imag­i­na­tive play.

Above the dresser was an ever-so-popular party frame from Ikea pos­ing the ques­tion to all the guests, young and old: “Do you believe?”.

Well, do you?! Whether you do believe or not (yet!), please stay tuned for Part II to see addi­tional party decor and favors, mag­i­cal activ­i­ties, and our photo booth!

Lyn­lee, you’ve totally out­done your­self with this party! Love so many of the details includ­ing the green pixie juice in vases! And how did you move the dresser? Would you add this party to our site so I could show it off? I’m dying to.

Love this! we have a boy and a girl with a year and 6 days between them and plan to do a joint 1&2 yr party and have been look­ing for some­thing that was not to much either way or Mickey/Minnie this would be amazing!!!!

[…] and devel­oped through­out the years, from her very first Poo­dle in Paris party to her 4th Find­ing Nev­er­land birth­day to last year’s Vin­tage Hawai­ian Luau. Due to work com­mit­ments and all the […]